I have been doing some reading off and on through the forums on mailbox mods and cold smoking cheese. I recently did some back last spring when it was still cold here, using my MES 40. To be honest, the only cheese I tried from it was the mozzarella sticks - which came off slightly gritty from ashes in AMNPS below. Probably smoked around 50-60# of cheese on a few runs, vac sealed it, and gave most of it away to friends and family. They did not try any of it until several weeks/months later, and WOW! I'm suddenly expected to bring smoked cheese with me everywhere I go.. so something must have worked! Haha!

Now that I am seeing cooler nights here in northwest Kansas (I am sad.. I'm a very fair weather guy and love the heat over cold, as well as longer days..) I figure it's a good time to start planning ahead. If I get a chance this week/weekend I look forward to improving my new smokes with this method. Luckily I came across a mailbox free (those things are NOT cheap!) so I just need to get some dryer duct/tape, and some wholesaw bits. Hope to bring you guys some pics and updates on my version of this.

Thank you very much in advance for the well documented information. :)

At least you'll find good use of the cold weather for your cheese (and other cold) smoking!

Around here, it gets cold enough that I need to have some heating even for cold smoking at times! You'll probably find that, too.

I may modify the temperature controller on my MES so I can set it to lower temperatures. The minimum setting on the stock controller is 100 degrees. Since I'm using a separate smoke generator, there's no need to use the OEM controller for me.